Victim was shot six times

Sunday

Jul 11, 1993 at 12:01 AM

A Spartanburg woman who was gunned down in the parking lot of a shopping mall Friday was struck six times, and the bullet that entered her neck ended her life, Spartanburg County Coroner Jim Burnett said Saturday.Burnett

Police also found that she was carrying a loaded gun in her purse when she was killed. An autopsy showed Lisa Smith, 27, was wounded in both legs by gunfire apparently while she was running for her life in the parking lot at Foothills Factory Stores. She was on her lunch break from Beverage-Air with her best friend and they had been shopping for shoes. When they came out, the women were discussing where they were going to eat. It was around 12:40 p.m., when police say Mrs. Smith's ex-husband, Paul "Rusty" Smith, was waiting for them with a 9 mm handgun. Her ex-husband, whom she had divorced three months ago, ap proached her as they neared her car. The women saw him and started running. Mrs. Smith's friend, Rona Sue Edge, 26, of Moore, was grazed by a bullet. She felt it hit her cheek and fell to the ground, waiting for the shooting to stop. Spartanburg County Sheriff's officers found 11 spent casings near her body. "She (Mrs. Smith) had a gunshot wound to the back of each leg. She was apparently hit while she was running. They entered the back and exited the front of her legs, breaking both of them," Burnett said. "She also had a bullet wound to the right forearm and two in her right shoulder. And the one that caused her death was a gunshot wound to the neck that traveled left and right and partially tran sected her cervical spine," he said. She died immediately, he said. While going through the ev idence at the scene, Burnett found a loaded .25 caliber automatic handgun in the zipper section of her pocketbook. Family members told Burnett that when Mrs. Smith separated from her husband after six years of marriage last November, she be gan sleeping with the loaded gun under her pillow because she was afraid of him. Six months ago, Mrs. Smith moved into a duplex in the Oak Forest neighborhood with her younger sister, Debra Woodfin. Her ex-husband didn't know where she was living. Ms. Woodfin told Burnett that her sister began to feel more se cure and stopped sleeping with the gun. But Tuesday, Smith learned where his ex-wife was staying and found her unlisted telephone num ber. He called her, and they began arguing about his visitation rights with their 14-month-old daughter, Taylor. Burnett said Mrs. Smith's family said she began sleeping with the gun on the night stand and carry ing it with her at all times. Family members said Smith had threatened to kill Mrs. Smith sev eral times and had pointed guns at her. LSMITH